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Originally Posted by
MacRulez 
With all due respect, Google searches are hardly a scientific measure of either market sharer or user satisfaction.
When the search links to posts and issues on various ubuntu forums and knowledge bases about dependency hell within the last 5 years then it shows that dependency hell isn't some ancient problem on linux even if you use ubuntu.
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Linux has a much more difficult task: to run on nearly every computer manufactured in the last decade or more. Even just looking at Ubuntu, the main release runs well on just about any box made in the last haf-decade, and Xubuntu (the "light" version) runs on even older machines.
What does this have to with the rather brain dead decision to switch to PulseAudio before it was ready? Sure it was an initial Fedora idiocy but Ubuntu jumped off the cliff right after them. Sound on Ubuntu has been borked since and maybe kinda sorta finally resolved in 10.10. Sorta.
This has zippo to do with drivers and hardware variations.
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Actually, in Ubuntu 11.04 Gnome is being replaced with Unity as the default. Sure, Gnome fans and Unity fans are duking it out over that, and some of the Ubuntu community is as annoyed by the change as so many long-time Mac fans were when Mac OS evolved into OS X.
Unity is a shell for gnome. So they aren't switching from Gnome to Unity as much as swapping the full Gnome (3.0) shell for the Unity shell.
How much of this does Canonical really do? Unity runs under compiz vs mutter but compiz didn't come from Canonical either but SUSE. They intend to move Unity to Wayland but that was started at RH.
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Overall, IMO the migration to Unity is every bit as bold and smart a move for Canonical as Apple's switch to NeXT, reskinning it to become OS X, was for its users.
Yah...okay, if you say so. It's a freaking shell, okay?
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And things get even better in 2012 when Ubuntu becomes the first major distro to drop X11 in favor of Wayland, a BIG step for the future of the platform, bigger in scope for that OS than Apple's CoreGraphics for its platform. Fedora recently announced that they're joining the Wayland bandwagon as well. Things will be moving very quickly in some interesting ways as those two leading distros finally cut the apron strings to the older X11 foundation.
Dumping X is going to be a big step forward. Of course, as I pointed out, they're just going to use Wayland. They didn't initiate it. Nor do they appear to really be contributing all that much given the grouching.
http://www.markshuttleworth.com/arch...comment-339189
Ubuntu might be the first distro to move to wayland but RH is doing all the heavy lifting.
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Of course none of this will affect Mac users, and even most of the Windows world will be unaffected. But those who enjoy Linux appreciate the contributions Shuttleworth has brought to the table.
Yah, Unity, Bazaar, Launchpad, uTouch and Upstart. I haven't played with utouch as much as I should have but honestly I just can't be bothered. Android is a far better netbook OS than Ubuntu ever will be.
Upstart is nice but...jeez, it replaces sysvinit. That isn't some huge project like replacing X. Neither is Bazaar...it's just another dvcs like git or mercurial. Like we need yet another half baked dvcs vs making the other two work better.
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Compare Ubuntu's 12 million users to NeXT's 50,000. If Apple hadn't acquired NeXT there's good reason to doubt either company would still be with us today.
Ubuntu went from zero to 50% of the Linux market in little more than half a decade, and growth is stronger than ever.
Before Ubuntu existed Linux desktop share was around what? Around 1-2%? Linux desktop share is now what? Around 1-2%. Essentially Ubuntu did an awesome job of growing it's desktop market share at the expense of other distros rather than actually expanding Linux desktop share.
If Ubuntu didn't exist those 12M users would be 12M Fedora or suse users.
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But as someone who enjoys both Mac and Ubuntu, I see many opportunities for the two OSes to compliment each other, addressing different market segments that can erode Microsoft's base substantially, and make millions more people happy in the process.
I find that Win7 is a perfectly fine OS. It's certainly far better than Ubuntu as a desktop OS. I don't think most folks would be happier switching from Win7/MS Office to Ubuntu/LibreOffice (what a dumb name).
Eroding MS's base fortunately isn't an objective of Apple. It'll happen to some degree but it's not a design goal. All to often it seems like it is the primary design goal for many Linux adherents.
